Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [69]
“They didn’t want me showing them up with the schoolmaster.”
“I meant the thrashing.”
Dominick laughed. “Ah, that. Well, I think I was expected to at least kick off my shoes before I went in. Fortunately, I could swim, but the shoes ended up at the bottom of the pond. So, alas, did my little New Testament.”
“You carried a New Testament around with you when you were a boy?” Tabitha stopped at the edge of the cobbles and stared up at him.
“I did.” He gazed past her toward the sea a half mile away. “I had a deep faith in God.”
“Had?”
“But now . . .” He turned away from her. “I’ve probably irrevocably damaged my relationship with God.”
“Do you still have one, a relationship, I mean?” She felt an odd twinge, rather like envy in anticipation of him saying yes.
He didn’t answer until they walked along the edge of the water, where a narrow path of hard-packed sand made the going easier, if one didn’t mind a few drops of water spraying the clothes or face. Tabitha didn’t mind the water. The silence between them stung.
It remained until they stood parallel to her cottage. Then he turned to her and took her hands in his. “I don’t know. The Bible says I do, but I can’t forget what I’ve done. Every morning, my servitude here reminds me that I am worse than the son in the parable, who said he would work in the vineyard but didn’t.”
“I should think you’re more the son who said he wouldn’t work in the vineyard but did.” She offered him a tentative smile.
“No, my dear, that’s you.” He folded her hands together between his. “You claim you have no relationship with God, but then I find out how you give to others, knowing you may never receive a farthing for your efforts. You comfort and encourage everyone from Mayor Kendall to those urchins who run wild in the square.”
Her cheeks heated despite the sea spray. “Where did you hear such nonsense?”
“From Letty, from Japheth, from one of those urchins in the square.” He drew her hands toward him, pulling her closer. “The village council will listen to Harlan Wilkins because he is possibly the second-richest man in town next to Kendall, but they won’t act against you no matter what he says, because their wives and children think so highly of you.”
She tried to shrug off the praise. “They don’t associate with me a great deal, not in a social sense.”
“Because you’re a heathen, my dear.” He grinned. “If you want to be invited to the parties, you must go to church.”
“I can’t pretend a faith I don’t have.”
“And I . . . respect you for that. But I can’t help but wonder if you’re pretending not to have faith.” He nudged her chin up with their clasped hands and held her gaze. “I recognize the symptoms, since I have them myself.”
“Maybe.” She licked her suddenly dry lips.
His gaze dropped to her lips. For a heartbeat, she thought he intended to kiss her, and she caught her breath. Then his focus flicked past her, and he stepped away. “Not now.”
Tabitha turned her head. A man silhouetted against the lowering sun stood without a hint of motion, like a cat ready to spring on a mouse.
18
______
The smell of long-dead fish assaulted Raleigh’s nostrils as he slipped into the shed a hundred yards behind his house. So did another scent, something crisp and clean and familiar.
His contact, his puppet master on American soil, had arrived before him.
Raleigh swallowed against a surge of sickness at the back of his throat. In just a few minutes, he would learn who the man was or was not. It was a risk. If he spoke the wrong words, this man might kill him. Raleigh would die knowing who his contact was, but it wouldn’t help Tabitha or bring her back to him. If he learned who the man was not, it could free him to launch a full broadside of attempts to win her back, instead of letting his guilt add its weight to her rebuffs. Seeing Dominick Cherrett in intimate dialogue with Tabitha on the beach that afternoon, about to kiss her, had given him the impetus to take the risk, to send a message to his master and request this meeting.
Now that he stood no more